


More Than This World Can Contain

by starfishstar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, I wanted to try out writing many different types of relationships other than romantic relationships, Making a new life, Post-Canon, catching up with various secondary characters in the years after the war, genfic, post-canon character headcanons, stories about friends, stories about mentor and mentee, stories about one’s relationship with oneself, stories about siblings, stories about turning former romance into true friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2020-03-19 20:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18977911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishstar/pseuds/starfishstar
Summary: A set of one-shots, each catching up with a different character in the years beyond the end of the war. So far, the chapters are:1. California (Cho)Cho Chang flees the wreckage of the war, and learns to make a new life for herself in California.2. Old Friends (Viktor)Viktor Krum, now a successful businessman in his post-Quidditch career, has recently relocated his home and business headquarters to London and is curious to look up an old friend: Hermione Granger.3. Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wizards (Dean)Dean Thomas survived a year on the run from Voldemort, only to find that the hardest part is reconnecting with his Muggle family now that it’s all over.4. I Was Once As You Are Now (Neville)Neville Longbottom, now settled into life as a Hogwarts professor, finds unexpected parallels between his younger self and his present-day student Teddy Lupin.





	1. California (Cho)

**Author's Note:**

> The chapters are unconnected, each focusing on a different character – they don’t necessarily need to be read in order! There will be five chapters in total.
> 
> My thanks to [emily_in_the_glass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emily_in_the_glass/pseuds/emily_in_the_glass) for thoughtful beta feedback and great discussions of story and character!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cho Chang flees the wreckage of the war, and learns to make a new life for herself in California.

 Cho loved California from her very first day.

Not because of the ocean that spread like a sparkling banner at the feet of the steep city. Not because of the sea air, or the palm trees, or the parks where people laughed and played music and made anarcho-socialist collaborative art projects – although all of those things were wonderful in their own ways.

What Cho loved was how, in San Francisco, she simply blended into the crowd. So many people here looked like her (unlike Hogwarts, so _very_ much unlike Hogwarts). And more importantly, no one here knew her. If Cho stood out at all, amongst these American Muggles, it was only when she opened her mouth and revealed her accent: an accent Americans effusively described as “gorgeous” and “charming” and – inexplicably – “sexy.”

In California, no one knew her. She wasn’t “that girl who was dating Cedric Diggory when he died.” She wasn’t “the girl who had a chance with Harry Potter, can you believe she messed that up?” She wasn’t a member of Dumbledore’s Army, a survivor of the final battle, a Hogwarts student from Those Infamous Years. In California, no one even knew she was a witch, for the simple reason that she didn’t tell them.

Cho hadn’t realised how claustrophobic the British wizarding world was, until she got herself free.

That first summer after the battle, Cho found a job waiting tables at a tiny Mexican bistro perched atop a precariously steep street. Every day before starting her shift, she took a last moment to stand on the pavement outside the restaurant, gazing down the hill and over this world that was her new life.

Marietta had begged her to stay in the UK. They could get a flat together in London, somewhere close by Diagon Alley, and they could both work for the Ministry. Even after everything, Marietta still wanted that dream.

Cho knew Marietta had lost people, too. It wasn’t fair to think, as she sometimes caught herself thinking, that Marietta hadn’t been changed by the war, that she hadn’t been hurt. The war had come for all of them, one way or another. But Marietta was still willing to put her head back up and dare the wizarding world to think of her whatever it would think. And Cho…wasn’t.

It wasn’t out of cowardice. Cho wasn’t afraid of anything anybody might have to say. It was more a kind of exhaustion. A weary resignation that had grown to encompass an entire people, an entire nation. There was nothing the wizarding world could offer anymore that Cho Chang could imagine wanting.

Her boss at the restaurant was so impressed with Cho’s progress, from clueless novice to competent server in mere weeks, that by July he was begging her – only half in jest – to stay on and work for him full time, instead of returning to university when autumn came.

It was only by him saying this, that she realised it was even a possibility: Cho could, if she chose, attend a Muggle university here in America. Step into the normal college life her boss assumed she already had.

She got a scholarship, and a second part-time job to fund what the scholarship didn’t cover. And sooner than she would have imagined, Cho was an educated woman with a degree in business administration, and then a good job, and then a better one. Her parents gave up trying to convince her to move home, and instead started trying to convince her to settle down with someone, even if it did mean staying in America.

Back home, Harry Potter married Ginny Weasley. Amos Diggory erected a monument. And the British wizarding community, at its usual painfully slow pace of progress, grappled with its torn-apart past and struggled its way towards a future that might be a little bit better.

Loyal Marietta still wrote letters by long-distance petrel post, and Cho was happy to hear of her successful career at the Ministry. But there was no part of her that wanted that for herself. She would rather live out all her days in anonymity than give herself back to that world, a world that had sent a whole generation of children to die for its prejudices.

Cho wasn’t bitter; that wasn’t it exactly. But she’d been burned once, and she knew better than to venture near the fire again.

She first met Grant at a friend’s after-work barbeque. It was one of those perfect early October evenings: the air was mild and free of fog, and laughter seemed to ring freer than at any other time of year. Summers in San Francisco hardly lived up to their name, but the autumns were a dream.

Grant was the vice president of an environmental start-up; he’d founded it together with three friends straight out of university and was now a millionaire, at least according to the excited whispers of Cho’s friends.

It wasn’t the money that impressed her, though; it was the determination of a boy from Indiana who’d had a dream and crossed the country to make it happen. As a war-traumatised witch who’d remade herself at age 18, Cho could relate to that.

They’d been dating half a year before she finally gritted her teeth, sat Grant down and said, “There’s something I have to tell you.” Statute of Secrecy or no, if she was serious about this guy she couldn’t spend the rest of her life lying to him.

To her amazement, he received the revelation that his girlfriend was a real-life witch with enthusiasm. He wanted to know if he could meet her family, if they could do spells, if she could do spells, if she would show him one. But then he saw her face and asked, with the gentle compassion she loved so much about him, “Or is it something you’d rather not talk about?”

Cho, to her own surprise, found she didn’t mind talking about it. Telling Grant about magic wasn’t painful. He didn’t have any part in the history of it or in everything she had lost. He was just excited and sweet and eager to share this part of her life. She’d forgotten it was even possible to find magic beautiful.

So she went to the false panel behind the bookshelf and took out her old wand, its weight and shape so familiar even now, years after she’d last wielded it. Grant’s eyes grew wide as he watched her, and she didn’t need to think of a happy memory to work the spell – all she needed was Grant right there in front of her, with all his kindness in his eyes.

“ _Expectro Patronum_ ,” Cho said. The silvery shape that glided out from the tip of her wand was her same old swan, the same strong and graceful form she’d learned to produce in DA lessons with Harry all those years ago.

Tears prickled at her eyes. Had she missed magic all this time, and hadn’t known it?

She went and sat down next to Grant, where he was perched on the edge of her bed, and took his hand.

“Let me tell you how I first learned to cast that spell,” she said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by [a discussion about Cho on hp_diversity](https://hp-diversity.livejournal.com/137144.html) and particularly by the following comments there: 
> 
> –"JKR's comment that Cho married a Muggle always made me wonder if Cho might have felt disillusioned about the wizarding world after the events of the war. She lost Cedric, she almost certainly lost other friends... Maybe the Muggle world felt like a safer place after those experiences." (by pauraque)
> 
> –"I think Cho might have married a Muggle because she didn't feel safe and comfortable in the Wizarding World anymore. I'm guessing it must be exhausting to always wonder if people see you as "That girl who dated the boy who got killed", "The Boy-Who-Lived's 5th year sweetheart"... I think it might have been easier for Cho to find someone who saw her for who she was, rather than who she has been." (by nearlyconscious)


	2. Old Friends (Viktor)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viktor Krum, now a successful businessman in his post-Quidditch career, has relocated to London and decides to look up an old friend: Hermione Granger.

Viktor had achieved a great deal in his years since leaving professional Quidditch.

With successful business ventures across Europe, from Bulgaria to Britain and many points between, he increasingly found himself a man who needed no introduction. Muggles knew his reputation for business acumen and fell over themselves to close deals with him; wizards wanted signatures and photos, or to tell him breathlessly where they’d been when he caught the Snitch at the 1994 World Cup. Though he’d learned with time to hide his irritation, all this adulation remained fully as absurd to Viktor as it had seemed when he was first thrust into the spotlight of international sport at the age of eighteen.

Which made it all the more pleasant when the first Floo call he placed, after relocating his home and business headquarters to London, was met simply by Hermione Granger’s delighted cry of, “Viktor! Is it really you?”

“Yes, Hermione,” he said, still taking care, after all these years, to pronounce her name just as she had taught him. “Indeed, it’s me.”

“This is incredible!” Hermione was pink-cheeked with excitement as she leaned down to peer at him in her fire. From what he could see, the room behind her was a kitchen. Children’s things lay scattered across the floor: a squashed-looking teddy bear, a toy broom. Hermione beamed at him. “I haven’t seen you since – well, I’m not even sure. Can it really be since Fleur’s wedding?”

“Indeed.” Viktor had last seen Hermione Disapparating from the chaos that had smashed through that idyllic garden party. She’d had Harry Potter on one arm and Ron Weasley on the other, still in her lovely gown and with fierce determination on her face. It was not a sight he was likely to forget.

“But Viktor, how are you? What have you been doing?”

“That’s why I’ve called, in fact: to tell you that I’ve moved to England. To London, because this is where I do more and more of my business. And so I thought that perhaps we can meet, just like old times.”

“Oh –” Hermione bit her lip. “Viktor, I don’t know if you heard, but I’m married.”

“No, no.” Viktor felt his face flush at this misunderstanding. “That’s not what I intended. But we are old friends, yes? I am new in England and I would appreciate it to have an old friend.”

“Oh, of course!” Now Hermione was blushing too. “Right, sorry, of course.”

“I believe you work at the Ministry now,” Viktor continued, before she could feel a need to apologise further. “May I invite you to lunch somewhere near there one day?” 

*

The location Hermione had suggested was a small Muggle café not far from the Ministry. It had clean-scrubbed wooden tables and simple, straight-backed chairs, the sort of place that seemed to want to transport its customers back to the kitchen of a farmhouse in a previous century.

“I thought you might prefer this,” Hermione said, looking self-conscious. She was still breathless from her dash over from the Ministry, and red-faced from the cold outside. “I remember how you always hated people thronging around when they recognised you, and I thought that might happen a bit less among Muggles.”

“I don’t mind it nearly so much as I did then,” Viktor said. Then he realised, belatedly, that he’d answered the wrong question: Hermione had been trying to do something nice, that was the point. So he added hurriedly, hearing how he sounded too stiff and formal, but unable to express it better, “But I appreciate that thought.”

“Oh – that’s all right,” Hermione said, flustered.

They ordered their food and chose a small table near the window. Hermione settled her bag at her feet, and Viktor unwound his scarf and draped it over the back of his chair. His scarf was the crimson of the Bulgarian National Team, one of the few sentimental Quidditch indulgences he still allowed himself.

“Well!” Hermione said brightly. “This is nice. Thanks for thinking to look me up, now that you’re back in England.”

Viktor looked at Hermione across the table. She was grown up now, of course, as was he, both of them a decade and a half older than when they’d last met. And yet, in the ways that mattered, he could see that Hermione was exactly the same: her wild hair, the warmth of her smile, the fierceness in her eyes.

“I have always considered you a friend, Hermione,” he said.

She bit her lip. “I feel I ought to apologise. I don’t know why I fell out of touch all these years. I consider you a friend too, truly.”

“Hermione, no. There is no need for apology. I’m pleased to see you; that’s all that is necessary.”

“All right,” she said, though she still looked unconvinced. But then she blew out a breath and said it again, more like she meant it: “All right.” She picked up her fork. “So, you didn’t say over the Floo – what kind of business is it that’s brought you to England?”

So, as they ate, he told her about the booming international trade in metals that were used for both Muggle machine-building and wizarding metalcraft. Then he turned the conversation to her, and listened as Hermione talked passionately about her work to improve legal rights for all Beasts and Beings. Viktor was reminded of their conversations long ago in the Hogwarts library, always like this: Hermione talking passionately and Viktor listening with all his attention. She’d amazed him, then, with how deeply she cared about figuring out what was _right_ and then pursuing that thing, whatever it might be.

“Do you still work with, was it S.P.E.W.? The campaign for house-elves?” he asked.

Hermione flushed. “I can’t believe you remember that name. No – well, yes, of course, I still believe we need to do a lot more for elf rights. But the whole thing is more complicated than I was willing to admit when I was fifteen. Which I suppose comes as a surprise to no one but myself. We’re working now on getting a bilateral advisory committee together, elves and humans collaborating to review the current laws and see what needs to be improved.”

“It’s good to see that you still care just as you used to,” Viktor said. “I always admired this about you, very much.”

Hermione went even pinker than before. “I’m just trying to make things a little better. There’s so much that needs to be fixed, even now, so many years after the war. Because the prejudices that caused the conflict, they’re still there, and it’ll only happen again if we don’t address the underlying issues –” She broke off. “I’m sorry, listen to me lecturing at you! All these years later and still the first thing I do is start boring you about my work.”

“I’m not bored,” Viktor said truthfully. “I would tell you if I were bored.”

Hermione laughed. “Then you haven’t changed so much either, I suppose.” She paused to take a bite of her casserole, then said, “Listen, Viktor, I promise I won’t keep going on about it, but I _am_ sorry for not keeping in touch. During the war, it was madness, we were always running from one crisis to another. And then after the war…I don’t know, life kept rushing on somehow.”

“I see how hard you have been working,” Viktor agreed. “And I know that you’re married. You have children, yes?”

“Yes!” Hermione’s smile was uncomplicated and joyful, with an ease he’d never seen in her before. “Two kids, Rose and Hugo. They’re so funny and so clever. I know, I’m completely biased, but they really are.” She paused with her fork halfway back to her plate. “Speaking of which…would you like to meet them? You could come to dinner sometime, and meet the kids. And I know Ron would love to see you.” She must have seen a flicker of doubt in Viktor’s face, because she added, “Really. He would.”

When Viktor thought back on that year he’d spent at Hogwarts, he remembered first those uncomfortable early weeks of feeling so very out of place. And then, far pleasanter, the time after he’d finally dared to speak to Hermione: all the long hours they’d spent talking in the library or by the lake, and the pleasure he’d always taken in her company. But always, too, there had been Ron Weasley, lurking somewhere at the edges, scowling at Viktor and glaring at Hermione. So obviously jealous, yet too immature to recognise it in himself.

Viktor tried, now, to be fair; he knew Ron must have done a great deal of growing up since then. But still, it was hard not to picture that sulking fifteen-year-old, when Hermione spoke of Ron Weasley.

But years had passed, and Hermione had married Ron Weasley, and there was clearly much that Viktor did not know. Besides, this was Hermione asking. Of course there could be only one answer. “Yes,” he told her, setting his napkin down beside his plate. “I would like very much to meet your family. It would be an honour.”

“I’ll Floo you,” Hermione said. “I’ll talk to Ron to find an evening that works, and I’ll Floo you.”

*

It was evening and Viktor was sorting papers in the study of his new flat, when his fire blazed green.

The flat was far too large, its surfaces all steel and glass. But the assistant who’d done Viktor’s flat hunting, ahead of his arrival in London, had swooned over this place and declared it a perfect fit for a businessman of Viktor’s stature – whatever that meant.

Amidst all that cold steel, Viktor felt a rush of gladness simply at seeing Hermione’s head appear in the fire.

“Hi, Viktor!” She beamed up at him from within the cast iron scrollwork that framed the fire. “I’ve talked with Ron, and we’d like to invite you to dinner this weekend. Are you free?”

Which was how Viktor found himself, that Saturday evening, walking up to Hermione and Ron’s front door with a bottle of wine in hand. It was a narrow place in a row of London townhouses, the building’s simple brick façade made more inviting by large, white-framed windows. Curtains were pulled back to reveal lamps in the windows, casting a welcoming glow into the street.

Hermione opened the door to his knock, warmth and cheerful light spilling out of the doorway around her. “Hi, welcome –” she began, but even as she spoke, there came a crash from somewhere inside the house, and the high, shrill sound of small children shouting. Hermione rolled her eyes. “Sorry about that. If we hadn’t raised them ourselves, I would think they’d been raised by trolls. But come in, come in. The kids will settle down in a minute. They’re just, er, a bit excited…”

Viktor offered Hermione the wine, then turned to hang his cloak on a peg beside the door. When he turned around again, there were two children staring at him from the nearest doorway. Both had Hermione’s hair and Ron’s freckles, and Viktor guessed them at about six and four years old, the girl older than the boy.

“Hello,” Viktor said.

Both children gaped at him in silence.

“The thing is,” Hermione said, “ _someone_ let slip that you’re Viktor _Krum_ , as in the _famous_ Viktor Krum, whereas I’d been planning to let that particular fact out gradually, to avoid just this sort of reaction. But, no, instead it had to be a big, exciting revelation, moments before you were due to arrive…”

“I _heard_ that!” Ron called from somewhere in the house. Hermione grinned.

“Anyway,” she said, “this is Rose, and this is Hugo. Rose and Hugo, this is our friend Viktor. Can you say hello, please?”

In the doorway, her eyes still enormous and fixed on Viktor, quite possibly not having blinked since she’d first set eyes on him, Rose whispered, “ _Are you Viktor Krum?_ ”

“Yes,” Viktor said.

Rose let out a high-pitched shriek. Hugo, looking at his sister, shrieked too.

“ _DidyoureallyplayforBulgaria?_ ” Rose gasped.

“Yes, I did.”

“ _Didyoureally_ –” Rose continued, still not pausing for breath.

Hermione interjected, “All right, all right, let’s save the interrogation for later, shall we? Let Viktor come inside. Rose,” she added, because the child seemed to be gearing up to launch a protest, “could you please show Viktor the way to the kitchen?”

Successfully diverted from her indignation by being entrusted with this task, and holding her head up proudly, Rose marched away into the house. It was clear she intended Viktor to follow, so he did. Hugo trotted at his heels, glancing up at Viktor so frequently that he kept bumping into the wall as they walked. Viktor hid a smile.

“Here’s the kitchen!” Rose announced. “And this is Daddy.”

Indeed, there stood Ron Weasley with a wand in his hand, just closing the door of a Muggle-style oven, from which warmth and savoury smells wafted.

“Sorry, yes, we’re running a little late on the kitchen end of things,” Ron said, sounding flustered. “I mean – sorry! What I mean is, hello, Viktor, it’s good to see you.” He set his wand down on the worktop beside the oven and came over with his hand outstretched towards Viktor’s, bobbing his head earnestly. “I’m really glad you could come, mate.”

“It’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.” Viktor reached out to shake hands, trying to square this friendly, smiling man with the Ron Weasley of his memory.

“Unfortunately, dinner’s not quite ready yet –” Ron began.

“So I’ll pour us all a drink first,” Hermione finished, as she arrived in the kitchen behind Viktor and the children. She gave Ron a peck on the cheek, easy and affectionate, as she passed by on her way to set the wine down on the worktop.

Viktor watched as she poured three glasses of wine, then cups of pumpkin juice for the children. Here was Hermione, at home in her life. No more Dark Lord to outrun or dangerous tasks to complete, simply Hermione at ease among familiar things and the people she loved, in her comfortable, cosy home. It was good.

Hermione handed Viktor a glass. Rose came and bumped against Viktor’s leg, peering up at him. “Did you really play in the 1994 World Cup _and_ the 2002 World Cup?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Is it true you caught the Snitch in 1994 even though it made your team lose, because you would’ve lost by a whole lot, but you caught the Snitch fast so it wouldn’t be so bad?”

Viktor glanced over at Hermione, who looked embarrassed but also a little proud of her precocious daughter. “She’s rather Quidditch mad,” Hermione apologised. “I can stop her at any point if it’s too annoying.”

“It’s not annoying,” Viktor said. He was impressed that Rose knew of the Bulgarian National Team at all, let alone details of their World Cup matches. He doubted many children her age could have found Bulgaria on a map. But then again, this was Hermione’s daughter.

To Rose he said, crouching down so he could speak to her directly, “When you’re the Seeker, sometimes you must make hard choices. There is no good choice, but still you must pick one: you lose later very badly, or you lose now but you can choose the way it happens. Does that make sense?”

“Uh-huh,” Rose agreed, nodding seriously. “My daddy always says you’re a brilliant strategist.”

Viktor glanced up at Ron, who was blushing to the roots of his ginger hair.

“Er,” Ron said.

“Rose isn’t the only one in this house who’s a bit Quidditch mad,” Hermione said, patting Ron on the shoulder.

Viktor found himself surprised into a laugh by the easy teasing in Hermione’s tone. After a moment, Ron ducked his head and laughed too.

“Come on through to the lounge, Viktor,” Hermione said. “We can chat until dinner’s ready.”

Ron remained in the kitchen, and Viktor followed Hermione into the next room, the children trailing behind. Hugo flopped down on a brightly coloured throw rug to play with a toy Quidditch figurine. The figure wore the orange robes of the Chudley Cannons and its kit suggested it was a Beater, but Hugo was making it swoop through the air like a Seeker.

Rose, meanwhile, came and leaned hard against Viktor’s knee, once he’d sat down on the squashy, cushion-strewn sofa. Rose nodded along seriously at everything he and Hermione said, as though she understood everything and agreed completely. It was absurd and rather endearing.

“How are you liking London so far?” Hermione asked, as Viktor sipped his wine and Rose nodded along.

“I like it,” Viktor said, once he’d taken a moment to consider whether this was in fact true. “I’m not certain if it will ever feel like a home, but it has something exciting, I think. The city is very busy and very alive. And you?” he asked. He’d never pictured Hermione settling in London, but then, there were a great many things he’d never pictured.

“Oh, yes, we like it,” Hermione said, reaching out absently to stroke Rose’s hair. “Ron makes noises now and then about moving closer to his family, and we may do that someday. It’s not as though we couldn’t Apparate to work just as easily from there. But I came to London straight after I’d finished at Hogwarts, and Ron and Harry were already here, since they were training in the Auror Department by that point. I think we all loved that feeling of being newly grown-up and on our own in the big city, and somehow a bit of that feeling’s lasted even now.”

Ron had come to lean against the lounge doorway, with his wand in one hand and salad tongs in the other. “It’s true,” he agreed. “Those were great times, those first years in London.”

He grinned at Hermione, and she smiled back at him, and Viktor saw all the history there.

“Anyway, everything’ll be ready in about five minutes,” Ron said, and disappeared back in the direction of the kitchen.

Little Hugo came and leaned against Viktor’s other leg, opposite where Rose was, with a picture book in his hand. He nudged the book against Viktor’s knee and said, “Read this to me.”

“Hugo!” Hermione exclaimed. “Say ‘please’, please. _Ask_ Viktor if he would please read the book to you.”

“Please read this to me,” Hugo repeated.

Viktor looked down at the book cover, which had a picture of a bear floating under a balloon, with bees all around.

“Do you know it? It’s a Muggle classic,” Hermione explained. “I wanted them to have things from my childhood, too. You don’t have to read to him, though, Viktor, unless you really want to.”

Hugo nudged Viktor with the book again, gazing up into his face. “Please?”

“Yes, I will read to you,” Viktor replied, and nodded at Hermione to show he was responding to her concern as well. To Hugo he said, “It’s not every day I have the opportunity to read a book about a bear. Is it a good book?”

“The _best_ ,” Hugo said, and clambered up to plop himself unselfconsciously onto Viktor’s lap.

So Viktor read aloud to Hermione’s son about a small bear who loved honey and tried to trick some bees by disguising himself as a raincloud. Rose leaned in to look at the pictures, too, propping her chin against Viktor’s arm.

They’d read up to the point where the bear sang a song to himself, when Ron called from the kitchen, “Grub’s ready! Come and get it!” Both children scrambled from Viktor’s lap and ran towards the sound of their father’s voice.

“Raised by trolls, all three of them,” Hermione said, shaking her head, but she was smiling. “Shall we go through?”

They relocated to the dining room, where Hermione coaxed the children into their seats, while Ron filled plates from an enormous shepherd’s pie and an equally enormous green salad.

Once the children were settled and engrossed in their meals, Ron turned to Viktor. “Sorry, this is probably really annoying, but I just want to say it once and then I’ve got it over with: you were _brilliant_ in the 2002 World Cup. I know Bulgaria didn’t win, again, but you played brilliantly. I just wanted to say that.”

“Ron!” Hermione exclaimed. “Merlin’s sake, you’re as bad as Rose.”

“Please don’t worry, I don’t mind it,” Viktor told her. And that was true, in its own way. The thought of the 2002 World Cup still shot a pain through his heart, but he had learned to live with that. And he could recognise when a comment was kindly meant. To Ron he said, “I appreciate your words. Thank you.”

“You know, I’ve always wondered,” Ron said, despite the way Hermione was frowning at him, “how did you even get started playing for the national team in the first place? I mean, you were still in school when you played your first World Cup!”

Viktor took a bite of his shepherd’s pie. “This is excellent, by the way.” He inclined his head to Ron, who nodded in thanks. Then he went on, “I played for a local league team each summer, when I was home from school. You must understand, Bulgaria is not a large country. If someone is good at Quidditch, the scouts will find them. And a World Cup was coming, so they were keen to find new players.”

“But how did you find the time to train at that level, while you were at school?” Ron still looked awestruck.

Viktor felt his face settle into a scowl, as he thought back to that time. Quidditch had never been a burden, but the politics surrounding it sometimes were. “The professors ensured that I had the time. I received much special treatment at Durmstrang, because the school liked the honour of having a student who played for a national team. It did not always make me popular.”

This, of course, was an understatement. Viktor’s duelling skills had been honed primarily in defence of himself and his honour: not from foes, but from envious fellow students.

“Durmstrang,” he concluded, “was not a good place to stand out.”

“Durmstrang,” Ron echoed. “Not to be rude, mate, but what was that _like_?”

Hermione made a small noise of discomfort. “Really, Viktor, we don’t have to talk about Durmstrang if you don’t want to.”

This he remembered about Hermione: her concern, always, for others’ feelings, and her desire to be considerate and fair. Once, it would have made him reach out and clasp her hand in appreciation for her kindness. But of course he did not do that now.

“I don’t mind to talk about Durmstrang,” he said instead, with a polite nod to Hermione to acknowledge her concern. To Ron he said, “Anything you’re imagining, I’m sure, is even worse than how it really was. No, it was not pleasant. Life at Durmstrang was not cosy or fun, as it often seemed to me your time at Hogwarts was. But it was an education, a very good education, and for that I was willing to suffer a little.”

“But wasn’t it – er –” Ron looked uncertain how to finish his sentence diplomatically.

“Full of Dark wizards, yes,” Viktor agreed, taking another forkful of potato. “Our headmaster was a former Death Eater, and many of the other masters were not much better. Are you asking if I agreed with them? I did not agree with them.”

“No, I didn’t mean that!” Ron exclaimed, sounding horrified. “Sorry, that’s not what I was trying to say at all. But – how did you get through it? Go through all those years there, and still come out okay in the end? I mean, we had to deal with all kinds of stuff at Hogwarts, but at least we knew we had professors who were on our side, if we really needed them.”

“I’ve wondered that, too,” Hermione admitted, turning to Viktor. “Durmstrang sounds like it could be, well, overwhelming. But Viktor, you always seemed so sure of what you believed, and so unshakeable about it.”

There it was again, Hermione’s talent for seeing people. Others had looked at teenaged Viktor and seen only his quick temper or his sudden rise to fame. But Hermione had somehow known to look closer. She’d seemed to understand that there was more to him than only the prickly exterior of a boy thrust too soon into the spotlight. That beneath all that was someone who had loyalties and strong beliefs, much as she herself had.

Even so, it had been hard, back then, to share much that was personal with Hermione. He’d been so unaccustomed to having anyone to confide in. So now he tried to do better. Be truer.

“My mother died when I was very young,” Viktor said, and he heard Hermione’s small intake of breath. He’d never told her that, in all their time together. “But in those few years of my childhood, she taught me to think and be certain in my beliefs about what is right, and to follow that always. At Durmstrang I always asked myself, before I took any action, what my mother would say of it. In fact, this is true everywhere, not only at Durmstrang. I do not follow any witch or wizard, unless I am certain I believe in what they say.”

“Viktor,” Hermione said. She set down her fork and reached out to rest her hand on top of his. “I didn’t know that about your mother – I’m so sorry.”

“Yes,” Viktor said, looking down at her hand in surprise. “Yes, that’s how it is.”

Hermione squeezed his hand, then let it go. Taking up her fork again, she said, “And I think I understand what you mean. If you admire someone, if they teach you well, they don’t have to be there in person to still be able to guide you. I feel that way about my parents, too. Especially when we were on the run during the war, and they were so far away. I know it sounds silly to say, because they’re Muggle dentists; they don’t know anything about magic or duels or all the things we had to face. But they’d taught me about being honest, and about doing what’s right. So even when things were at their very worst, I always felt I could find a way forward.”

“That’s true,” Ron said. He glanced over at Hermione, another shared look with a weight of history behind it. “We had to figure out a lot of things for ourselves at Hogwarts, and then later, in the last year of the war. But we’d had people in our lives before that who’d steered us well.”

“We have all been fortunate, then,” Viktor said.

Rose, who had been quiet a surprisingly long time, immersed in her meal, now piped up, “What does ‘fortunate’ mean?”

Ron laughed and said to Viktor, “She’s going to be a professor, this one. I predicted it when she was about a year old, and I still don’t think I’m wrong.” Turning to his daughter, he said, “It’s another word for ‘lucky’. You know, like in ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’ – remember how ‘fortune’ is another word that means ‘luck’?”

“Oh, _yeah_ ,” Rose said. “I know _that_ , Daddy.”

Apparently satisfied, she turned her attention back to her shepherd’s pie.

Hermione glanced up, from where she’d leaned in to help Hugo cut a bite of his own pie, and commented, “I know it may not seem like it, but I’ve really tried not to push my interests on them. It’s fine if their interests aren’t academic ones. Rose knows she doesn’t need to excel at school to earn our love. And yet…”

“And yet,” Ron continued the thought, “they see their mum’s example, how much she loves understanding how the world works. She makes learning seem cool.”

“‘Cool’!” Hermione laughed. “That’s not what you thought when _we_ were at school.”

“Fair enough,” Ron conceded easily. “Some things took me a little while to figure out.”

Soon, the children asked to be excused from the table to play. Hermione picked up the wine to refill Viktor’s glass.

Watching as she set the bottle down again, Viktor commented, “Do you know, I think you are now the friends I’ve known the longest in my life. Both of you,” he added, turning to include Ron as well. “There are students from Durmstrang I knew from a younger age, of course, but there are not many of them with whom I care to stay in contact.”

Hermione’s eyes on him were wide. “But that’s so sad. To think there’s no one else from back then you would want to stay in touch with.”

“No, no,” Viktor assured her, “this is a good thing. Most people keep only a few friends, if any, from each stage of their life. The year at Hogwarts was only a brief stage in my life, and yet we know each other still. I feel fortunate.”

“That’s a lovely way of thinking about it.” Hermione nodded slowly. “And I suppose that’s true: it’s not possible to carry every connection we’ve ever made with us through the rest of our lives. Which means every friend we’ve found and kept is a fortunate thing.” A smile warmed her face, as she looked at Ron, then turned again to Viktor. “I’m so glad you’ve come to London, Viktor. It will be lovely to have a chance get to know you again.”

This was Hermione exactly as he remembered her: bright-eyed, passionate and entirely committed to the people in her life, whether that be as family or partner or friend.

It was good to be in her presence again. It was different, but it was good.

Viktor lifted his glass, and looked at Hermione and Ron. “Here’s to old friends,” he said.

Together, they raised their glasses to that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired by these two metas on Viktor Krum: 
> 
> • a meta (previously [here](https://antiheroicshenanigans.tumblr.com/post/106974953235/reasons-i-think-the-hp-fandom-should-talk-about) but now a broken link) that first got me thinking about Viktor as a character, by mentioning points such as:  
> – "He was an internationally famous Quidditch player but showed like zero signs of being a conceited ass about it."  
> – "He was an internationally famous Quidditch player with lots of fangirls, but hung around the library for ages trying to work up the courage to ask Hermione Granger to the Yule Ball."  
> – "He didn’t behave like an asshole dudebro when Hermione wasn’t interested in dating him."  
> – "He stayed on good enough terms with Fleur that he was invited to her wedding."
> 
> • [this meta](http://hoefflepuff.tumblr.com/post/120032535309/do-you-know-whats-sad-the-fact-that-the-person) pondering how it could be that the person Viktor would miss most during the third Triwizard task was Hermione, a girl he’d just met – and wondering what they says about his life back home.
> 
> This fic also owes a debt of gratitude to “[At the Start of Whatever](https://swissmarg.dreamwidth.org/59187.html)” by swissmarg, which goes a very different direction with Viktor and Hermione, but is a long-time favourite of mine.
> 
> And of course I’ve got these ongoing headcanons about Hermione’s legal work for equal rights… Bits of that theme are also in [Twenty Years On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311407) and [Saying Yes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/821297/chapters/1556418). And of course there’s her earlier work on inter-house unity in [Chambers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/632151/chapters/1143552) and [Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149581). :-)


	3. Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wizards (Dean)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean Thomas survived a year on the run from Voldemort, only to find that the hardest part is reconnecting with his Muggle family now that it’s all over.

Dean turned his steps into the neighbourhood park, heading for the small football pitch at the far side. He could see up ahead that his sister’s training hadn’t yet wrapped up, but he didn’t mind if he had to wait a bit.

Besides, he’d always liked this park. Dean had so many memories of playing here when he was small, running and climbing trees with other children from the neighbourhood. Even after all the years at Hogwarts, these London streets and this little park were still the places that felt most real to him.

Dean reached the pitch and leaned against a bit of fence along the sideline. His eyes landed immediately on his sister: Felicity was playing as an attacking midfielder, and seemed to be everywhere at once. She was either coiled energy waiting to spring, or she was a line of motion shooting down the pitch, her long, thin plaits flying out behind her. With Felicity, there was never any in-between.

It sometimes seemed to Dean that Felicity was more of an eldest sibling than Dean himself had ever been: throwing herself into the world, fierce in defence of the younger ones. But it made sense, really. He’d left home for good at age eleven, and she’d been the oldest one ever since.

Dean watched Felicity complete a long, arcing pass to one of her teammates, then punch the air when the other girl scored a goal straight off of her pass. Dean grinned. That was his sister through and through. He could still picture Felicity as she’d been at five or six, crowing from the top of a rickety fort she’d built out of kitchen chairs, until their mum rushed in and ordered her down.

The trainer’s whistle blew, and the girls jogged to the edge of the pitch for a last few words of advice. Then they dispersed, laughing and calling out last comments to each other. Dean crossed to where Felicity was sitting on the grass, changing out of her football boots. She looked up and gave him a less than enthusiastic nod.

“Have a good training?” Dean asked.

“Uh-huh.” Felicity bounced to her feet and flicked her long plaits over her shoulder, then leaned down to scoop up her boots and shove them into her sports bag. 

“I’ll carry your bag if you like,” Dean offered.

Felicity rolled her eyes at him. “I think I can handle it.”

She slung the bag over her shoulder, and they started towards the street.

Felicity had protested, that morning, when their mother asked Dean to fetch his sister from football. (“Mum! I’m fourteen! I don’t need a chaperone!”) She still looked mortified by her brother’s presence, as the other girls set off walking home singly or in groups of friends.

But Dean appreciated that their mum did this, when he visited home: created little opportunities for Dean to interact with each of his siblings one to one.

Dean had been so young when he’d left for Hogwarts, and his brothers and sisters had been younger still. He’d never really got out of the habit of thinking of them all in one lump, as ‘the little ones’. And he’d spent so little time with them, first being away at Hogwarts, and even less now that he’d started an apprenticeship in Wales. And not at all in the year between, the year of the war.

Those years of distance, though, also meant that he had no idea what to talk to his sister about. He tried again. “Did you have a good time today?”

“Yeah.” Felicity’s tone was expressive in its very lack of expression.

“Er… do you have a lot of friends on your team?”

“Uh-huh. Most of the team go to my school.”

Well, this was going nowhere. Maybe a different tack. “Are you still a West Ham fan?”

That got a flicker of interest. “Yeah. Are you?”

Dean laughed. “Are you kidding? You think that could ever change?”

“Well, I don’t know. You’re –” Felicity broke off and glanced around to make sure no one could hear them. They were walking up the street now, tall blocks of flats on either side. “You’re a _wizard_. I figured you must like different stuff now.”

Felicity was the only one of the little ones who knew the secret. Dean’s parents understood about the Statute of Secrecy, and they worried the kids might accidentally let something slip in public if they knew. So the rest of the family believed Dean had simply gone away to boarding school on an academic scholarship. And now that he was out of school, they thought he was apprenticing in Wales with a machine-builder, not a master swordsmith.

His parents had let Felicity know the truth when she started secondary school. In the wake of the revelation that her brother could do real-life magic, she’d gone through a phase of being awestruck around Dean, then a phase of being disdainful, and now his magic seemed to have faded into the general background noise of the many things that Felicity found uninteresting about her older brother on principle.

“Yeah,” Dean said, “there are wizarding sports I follow now, too. But footie is forever, right?” And he opened his jacket to show her the little claret-and-yellow West Ham patch he’d ironed onto the inside, where wizards wouldn’t be forever asking him what it was, but he could still feel that he kept his old loyalties near.

“Oh my _God_ , you are such a dork,” Felicity said, but she was laughing. She skipped a little, between one step and the next; Felicity always moved as if she were still playing sport, like she was always about to break into a run.

Dean lengthened his stride to keep up. “What about your friends at school, are they football fans?”

Felicity shrugged, still keeping up her easy, loping pace. “Yeah, mostly.”

“What other kinds of things do you and your friends like to do?”

Felicity looked over at him like he was asking the most idiotic questions. “I don’t know, normal stuff. Listen to music. Play video games.”

Dean felt it again, that chasm between himself and the rest of his family. He didn’t know how to begin explaining to his sister that so many of the things that seemed so normal to her might as well no longer exist for him. Most wizards didn’t even understand what a television was; forget about PlayStation or Nintendo.

He turned his head to consider his sister as they walked. Felicity was only five years younger than Dean. If she went to Hogwarts – if she were a witch – she would be nearly halfway through her magical education by now, about to start her fourth year.

Dean thought of everything he and his friends had coped with in their fourth year: the excitement of the Triwizard Tournament, the high drama of who was asking whom to the Yule Ball – and then the devastation of Cedric Diggory’s death, upending everything they thought they knew. His sister was almost the same age Dean had been then, when the war crashed in on him and his friends at Hogwarts.

“What?” Felicity demanded.

Dean hadn’t realised how long he’d been staring. “Er… nothing, sorry.” But he hated this, having to skirt around anything real when he talked to his family. Was he going to spend his whole life avoiding the topics that mattered? So he said, “I was just thinking how different my school must have been to yours.”

That sounded wrong as soon he said it, like he was trying to widen the gap between them instead of bridging it.

Felicity scrunched up her eyebrows. He fully expected her to reject the whole topic, brush away this hint of her brother’s oddness in favour of some other conversation that would make more sense. But instead she asked, an odd tension in her voice, “So what did you do for fun, then? At your wizarding school?”

It was the first time she’d asked him anything directly about his years at Hogwarts.

So Dean began cautiously. “I still drew all the time. Maybe you remember how I loved to draw when I was a kid?”

Felicity nodded, as she bobbed along beside him, her bag bouncing against her shoulder. “Yeah, obviously. You drew all the time.”

A little bolder, Dean went on, “So, I still did stuff like that, things I used to do. But there are also wizarding games, like Gobstones or wizarding chess. And of course there’s Quidditch. Quidditch is brilliant: you play on a pitch, same as football, but everybody can fly. They use brooms with special charms on them, and there are three different types of ball –”

“ _Flying_ football, seriously?” Felicity interrupted. When Dean looked at his sister in surprise, her eyebrows had knitted tightly together, like they always did when she was upset. “Because everything’s better with them, isn’t it? You can’t just play chess, it’s got to be _wizarding_ chess. And football’s not good enough, it’s got to be _flying_ football.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean protested. “Quidditch isn’t better than football, it’s just different, because –”

Felicity stopped dead on the pavement, her bag thwacking against her back. “How can you still talk about this wizard stuff like it’s so great? They almost got you _killed_ in their stupid _war_ , yeah? That’s how great wizards are!”

Dean had stopped walking too. He said quietly, “I didn’t realise you knew about the war.”

“Uh, _yeah_. Mum and Dad told me. Only after everything was over, of course, but they did finally get around to mentioning it. That there was a war between different wizards, and they were rounding up people like you.”

“Oh, Felicity,” Dean said. He could hear the fear in her voice, behind the anger. He’d had no idea that all this time she’d been worrying about a war she vaguely knew about and only half understood.

“Don’t _oh, Felicity_ me,” she snapped, and started walking again, even faster. “You never tell me anything, but I found out about it anyway. Don’t act like I’m some stupid kid.”

Dean had to jog a few paces to catch up with her. “You weren’t supposed to know, Fel. It was too dangerous for you to know. Even Mum and Dad, I only told them the least of it. Just that things weren’t safe and I needed to disappear for a while, and they shouldn’t try to contact me. My last year of school, Mum and Dad probably told you I couldn’t come home during the holidays because I was studying abroad, but that wasn’t true. I had to go on the run because of the war.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said, still striding fast and staring ahead, not looking at him. “I figured that out for myself, thanks.”

“You did?”

She whirled on him. “Because I’m not stupid! First Mum and Dad tell me, oh by the way, Dean can do magic and he goes to a secret school for wizards and we never told you, and then you disappear and weird stuff is happening all over the country and Mum and Dad look totally freaked out all the time, _yeah_ I figured out you weren’t really doing a year abroad in France!”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said helplessly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything.”

What a terrible year it had been. What was supposed to be his triumphant final year of magical schooling, he’d spent on the run instead, knowing that the only way to protect his family was to stay away from them. Knowing that because they weren’t wizards, they didn’t even know how afraid they should be.

“Oh, I don’t _care_ ,” Felicity spat out, striding ahead. “Who cares. We’re just your boring old not-magic family, who cares what we think?”

“I care.”

“You?” Felicity tossed her head in a teenager’s masterful dismissal. “You hardly come back here anymore. You don’t care what we think.”

“I do.” Dean stopped still and could only hope she would stop, too, and listen. “Felicity, I do care. A lot.”

She didn’t say anything, but she did stop, a few feet ahead of him. Her shoulders were hunched and her whole body leaned forward, like she was ready to run at any moment. She looked suddenly so grown up, standing there. Someone he hardly recognised at all.

“Fel,” Dean said, feeling so much love for his sister, this beloved stranger. “I know I’m part of another world now, but this is still where I’m from. This will always be where I’m from. And you’ll _always_ be my sister.”

“Oh, ugh,” Felicity said, apparently as disturbed by this expression of emotion as by any of the rest of it.

At least she no longer sounded angry. Dean pressed his advantage as a he took a couple of steps forward. “You’ll always be my little _baby_ sister, no matter how old you get. My itty-bitty little sweet baby sister.”

“Ugh!” Felicity repeated. But to his relief, Dean saw one corner of her mouth twitching up, despite herself.

He caught up to her. Grudgingly, she started walking again, matching his pace. “C’mon,” Dean said, “Ask me anything about magic, or Hogwarts, or about the war. I don’t mind, and I don’t have to hide anymore. What do you want to know about?”

She didn’t look at him for a while, but he could tell she was thinking, so he didn’t interrupt. He just walked and took in the familiar sights. There was the newsagent’s on the corner, even the signs in its windows unchanged from when Dean was small. They were nearly home now; this was the nearest shop, the one where their mum often sent one or more of the kids to fetch some last-minute grocery item.

Finally Felicity said, “How much danger were you in, really? Was it bad?”

How much ought he to tell his little sister about that year, about the constant terror and the endless running? Why should she have to know about things like that?

But he could see her fear and anger at having been left in the dark. And Felicity was nearly as old as Dean had been when Cedric Diggory was killed. He should accord her the respect of treating her like the age she was. 

“It was bad,” he said slowly. It still felt strange to talk about that year. The wizarding world talked about the final battle, the victory. It didn’t talk about the long days of living in terror, not knowing where to run, not knowing where Harry was or how to help him fight. “At first I thought I’d still be able to go back to school that year, but then the Ministry was taken over by Death Eaters – they’re the ones who wanted to round up people from non-wizarding families, saying we must have stolen our magic instead of being born with it.”

Dean still wondered sometimes about his biological dad, whether maybe he’d been a wizard, and Dean himself was half-blood without knowing it. But in the end, did it matter? Dean was from a Muggle family and proud of it.

“So what did you do?” Felicity’s steps had slowed as they got closer to home, like she didn’t want the conversation to end.

“I ran,” Dean said. “I couldn’t go back to school, and I couldn’t come home. So I just started hiding wherever I could.”

“That’s so scary,” Felicity said softly.

“It was,” Dean agreed. Felicity didn’t look at him, but he could see how wide her eyes were as she stared ahead up the street. “I was lucky, though. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I was. Even when things were at their worst, I met such good people, Fel. That was the amazing thing. We looked out for each other as much as we could, and they kept me safe. There was this one man, Ted Tonks –” Even now, it was hard to say Ted’s name without grief and gratitude closing up his throat. Dean swallowed and tried again. “Ted saved me so many times. He had a daughter, and he hated that couldn’t be there to look after her. So he looked after me like I was his own kid.”

“All that was happening to you, and I didn’t know about any of it,” Felicity said. She’d finally turned to look at him, and she didn’t look angry anymore, just sad.

Dean thought of apologising again, but what good would that do? Instead, he reached over to squeeze his sister’s shoulder. “I wish it could have been different,” he said. “I hope you can believe that.”

“Yeah,” Felicity said. She walked a few more paces, her bag bouncing evenly against her shoulder with each step. Then she burst out, “You don’t get to do that again, okay? You can’t leave me out of everything.”

“I won’t,” Dean said. “I promise you that.” He wasn’t quite sure how he would manage to keep that promise, keep his sister informed about his life from across the distance that separated their two worlds, but he knew he would do it. Once he’d promised it, he would always do it.

“You’re not allowed to disappear like that again,” Felicity demanded. “You have to tell us what’s happening. Or maybe not the little kids, maybe not even Mum and Dad if you don’t want to, but you have to tell _me_. If you don’t tell me anything, then I’m always going to be imagining it’s the worst possible thing.”

Dean looked at his little sister, her chin held high and fierce. “I promise,” he said. “I won’t leave you out. I’ll let you know about my life as much as I can.”

“ _Good_ ,” she said. “You’d better.”

“But that means you have to keep in touch, too. I want to know about the things you’re doing.”

Felicity cocked her head, considering. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”

Dean laughed, because she’d said it like it was a very weighty pronouncement.

Maybe it was. 

“Hey, Fel,” he said on impulse. “Do you want to visit me sometime in Wales? If Mum and Dad say it’s okay?”

“Uh, _yeah_. Of course. Do you think they’d say yes?”

“I’ll butter them up for a while, then I’ll ask right before I go back there in August.” He gave his sister a wink, and she rolled her eyes at him. Felicity had informed him many times that he had a face that wasn’t made for winking.

“You really, really promise?” she asked. “Don’t say it and then back out.”

“I won’t back out,” Dean said. He reached out and squeezed his sister’s hand. To his surprise, she let him. And even, for a second, squeezed back.

Then she tossed her head and said, “Race you!” Before Dean could say a thing, Felicity took off running across that last short distance to their building, her sports bag bouncing wildly against her back and her long plaits flying.

Dean laughed and broke into a run, following his sister home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The post-Hogwarts career I’ve created for Dean first appeared in my Ginny-centric story [Chambers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/632151/chapters/1143552), and also in Dean’s section of [Twenty Years On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311407). 
> 
> And Dean’s connection to Ted Tonks is explored, via a visit he pays to Andromeda Tonks, in [Never Too Late to Say Thank You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040566).


	4. I Was Once As You Are Now (Neville)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville Longbottom, now settled into life as a Hogwarts professor, finds unexpected parallels between his younger self and his present-day student Teddy Lupin.

Neville was up to his elbows in potting soil, helping some of his third-year students to replant their puffapods in the final minutes before the day’s lesson ended.

On one side of him sat Emma Rosen, edged in close and watching anxiously as Neville tucked a puffapod’s roots into fresh soil. Emma was the most timid in the class and always needed reassurance that she had done one step correctly before she dared to attempt the next one. Neville often invited her to sit beside him when he conducted demonstrations.

On Neville’s other side, Cassandra Johnson bobbed up and down in her seat, an endless fount of questions who reminded him of nothing so much as a young Hermione Granger: Why this type of soil and not that one, and did puffapods like acidic or basic soil more, and were there other plants that preferred it the other way round?

Neville had just answered the last of these questions to Cassandra’s satisfaction, when he heard a voice rise above the general chatter in Greenhouse Three in a wail: “I can’t _do_ it!”

Scanning the room for the source of that despairing voice, Neville’s gaze found Teddy Lupin, sitting with several friends at the far end of the classroom. Teddy’s hair was a spiky aquamarine today, and his usually cheerful face was pinched with distress as he stared at the puffapod in front of him.

From all Neville heard in the staff room, Teddy Lupin was simply one of those children who excelled at everything. In these two-and-a-bit years of having him as a student, Neville sometimes caught himself thinking of the boy almost as if he were another Harry: an orphan, yes, and as Neville knew too well, there was no sweeping away that heartbreak. But Teddy moved through Hogwarts much as Harry had once done: beloved of many, excelling effortlessly, winning friends and followers wherever he went. A golden child, touched by tragedy but also graced with persistent good fortune.

Still, any child might have an off-kilter moment that required a little attention to bring right again. Neville called across the greenhouse, “Stay after class for a few minutes, Lupin, before you go to lunch, and I’m sure we can sort it out.”

He saw Teddy’s mouth move in an affirmative reply, although the hubbub of the room drowned out the words. The rest of the class were now packing up their bags and jostling towards the door, then spilling out onto the wide lawn that separated the greenhouses from the castle. They formed an energetic pack of third-years, all of them eager for a glimpse of winter sun, and even more eager for the meal that awaited them in the Great Hall.

As the greenhouse emptied, Neville made his way across to Teddy, who sat forlornly on one of the long benches, staring down at a very drab puffapod on the table in front of him.

Teddy Lupin at thirteen somehow managed to be the very image of both his father and his mother, with his lanky limbs and his heart-shaped face. Even after these two-and-a-bit years, it still startled Neville each time he saw Remus Lupin’s thoughtful eyes looking out from Nymphadora Tonks’ cheerful face.

Teddy wasn’t his usual cheerful self at the moment, though. Neville sat down beside the dejected boy and his equally dismal-looking puffapod, and reached out to give the bulbous plant a soft pat. It quivered minutely, then sat still.

Neville loved the third year curriculum. Third year was when the students had learned enough of the basics that they could move beyond the simplest and most harmless plants, and begin to explore the more interesting species. Every year it delighted him all over again to watch their curiosity unfold. But third year was also when frustration could begin to rear its head, for the same reason: everything was no longer simple.

“What seems to be the matter?” he asked.

Teddy heaved a sigh and said, “My puffapod isn’t growing the way it’s supposed to, the way everybody else’s is. I don’t get it, ‘cause it should be easy. It’s not like – like – Arithmancy or something.” Then he glanced sideways at Neville and said, “Er, sorry, professor. I didn’t mean that Herbology isn’t, er, important, or…”

He trailed off, evidently afraid of making his comment worse.

But Neville was unoffended. He knew perfectly well that most people thought of Herbology as an uncomplicated field of study, even a bit of a fluff subject – until they actually got into the nitty-gritty of it. Herbology was similar to Potions in its deceptive simplicity, although Potions generally got a lot more prestige. But in both cases, there was more to it than merely dumping ingredients into a cauldron or sticking a plant into dirt.

To Teddy, Neville said, “I know it seems like it should be easy, but clearly at the moment it’s proving difficult. So, what do you think it is that’s not working right now?”

“I don’t know,” Teddy said, his brow furrowing as he stared at his plant. The puzzle aspect of the problem clearly appealed to him, despite his current frustration. “I’ve planted it the way you said, and I’ve watered it the way you said. But everybody else’s is already turning pink and growing pods, and mine is still…” He gestured at the sad brown-ish plant in front of him.

“Hm,” Neville agreed, reaching out again to stroke the puffapod. Again it shivered, the plant version of a sigh. “What else have you done for it?”

“What else have I –?” Teddy looked nonplussed.

Neville gave the plant a last little pat, then turned his full attention to Teddy. “Do you remember, when we first started the unit on puffapods, we talked about how they also need attention in order to grow well?”

Teddy nodded. “Yeah. But I thought that meant, you know, make sure they have enough water and light and stuff. Plant things. Right?”

“Those are important, certainly,” Neville agreed. He ticked them off on his fingers: “Water, nutrients, sunlight. The right temperature. The right atmosphere. Aside from a few exceptions, all plants need each of those things in order to grow. But some plants have their own little quirks, things they need that go beyond the basics. Puffapods are one of those species that need a bit more.”

“I just don’t understand why it isn’t working,” Teddy muttered, staring fixedly at the plant. Clearly he took its failure to thrive personally. “I thought I was doing everything right.”

Neville hadn’t meant to expand this impromptu tutorial beyond the particulars of puffapod care, yet he found himself asking, “Has anyone ever told you that you don’t need to be good at everything?”

Teddy’s face scrunched up in confusion. No, clearly he had _not_ been told that.

Gently, Neville said, “You’re doing fine at Herbology, Teddy, and I’m confident that your puffapod is going to be fine as well, once we get things sorted here. But you’re an intelligent, kind person who’s good at a great number of things already. Even if you were terrible at Herbology, it would be all right. A person doesn’t need to be equally good at everything they do. It seems to me that that’s a very important life thing to know, yet so many of us go through life without anyone ever thinking to tell us.”

“My –” Teddy’s eyes, usually so confident and eager, dropped to where his hands fidgeted with one of the cuffs of his robes. “My mum was really good at Herbology. I know it’s stupid, thinking I would be good at it just because she was, but…”

Neville knew the feeling behind that trailing sentence. He knew what it was to be left bereft of heroic but unknowable parents, whose reputations cast long shadows a child could despair of ever filling. Neville’s dad, for example, had been brilliant at Potions. And that knowledge had only made it that much worse every time Professor Snape sneered.

Neville leaned back on the bench and agreed, “I’m not surprised your mum was good at Herbology. She was brilliant at a lot of things – that’s how she became an Auror, after all. But your mum isn’t the one sitting in front of me right now. The person I want to know about is Teddy Lupin. I’m interested in all the things he’s good at, and all the potential he has for things he might not even know about yet.”

Neville himself had spent years not believing potential of any sort existed inside him. Yet a select few of his teachers had somehow seen it. Teachers like Pomona Sprout. Or Remus Lupin.

Professor Lupin, who’d looked at timid, bumbling Neville Longbottom, seen and understood his fears, but believed he could accomplish things anyway.

Teddy managed an awkward, self-deprecating laugh. “Whatever my potential is, professor, I don’t think it’s going to be anything to do with Herbology.”

“Well, let’s see about that.” Neville slid the puffapod pot closer for inspection.

The plant was smaller than the average puffapod, but solidly built and with a nice, sleek surface, albeit one that was currently an unhappy shade of brown. Aside from its drab colouring, there was nothing visibly wrong with this plant that should prevent it from flowering.

Neville turned from the plant to Teddy. “The first failure here is mine, because I realise now that I wasn’t detailed enough in my instructions at the start. Puffapods do need the usual things that plants need, like sunlight and water, but they also thrive on attention. They love to be part of the life going on around them. For most puffapods, simply exposing them to a happy bustle of people talking and doing things – such as we have here in this classroom – is enough. Or perhaps stroking the plant now and then, or talking to it.”

He gave the plant another small pat, by way of demonstration.

Teddy watched this with scepticism. “I did that – sorry, professor, not to be rude, but I did all that. I followed the instructions, talked to it, everything you said to do.”

With his fingers, Neville gently probed the puffapod’s surface, seeking out the spots where seedpods seemed most likely to grow. “Each plant is different. They’re like people that way. Sometimes it takes a little more work to figure out exactly what an individual one needs. Some puffapods like singing – perhaps we could try that?”

Though Teddy looked startled by this suggestion, he gamely asked, “I should…sing to it?”

“I can’t make any promises,” Neville warned, “but it’s one thing we could try. And if that doesn’t help, we’ll simply try something else.”

Needing no further prompting, Teddy leaned in close, his nose nearly touching the plant’s smooth surface, and launched into the first verse of an old nursery rhyme. It was a song Neville knew well. His grandmother had sung this to him, in her gravelly yet somehow captivating contralto, in the earliest years of his childhood. Those evenings lulled to sleep by her songs had been some of the only times when his grandmother’s imposing public persona had fallen away, and she’d seemed merely human. Teddy sang the song now, in his clear and still childlike voice:

“ _Ride a hippogriff to market,_  
 _Bow and kneel, bow and kneel,_  
 _Ride a hippogriff to market,  
_ _Chestnuts and cheese by the wheel.”_

The puffapod gave a small shudder. Then, as they watched, a very small pink pod extruded ponderously from one side of the bulbous shape. Teddy turned to Neville with wonder all over his face. “It _worked_. That really worked!”

“Try a bit more,” Neville suggested.

So Teddy sang:

“ _Ride a hippogriff to market,_  
 _Bow and kneel, bow and kneel,_  
 _Ride a hippogriff to market,  
_ _Ribbons and moonberry peel.”_

The puffapod shivered all over, blushed a faint pink, and sent out two more seedpods with matching little _pops_.

Teddy was flushed with excitement, nearly bouncing in his seat. “That was amazing!”

Looking confident now, Teddy took up the song again with gusto, patting the surface of the plant gently in time with the rhythm as he belted out the remaining verses.

Once the puffapod had produced a few more pods, Teddy sat back, glowing with accomplishment. He turned to Neville and commented, “My gran used to sing me that song when I was little. It’s super weird that a plant would like it…but also kind of cool. You know?”

Yes, Neville very much did know. Plants were weird and wonderful.

To Teddy, he said, “Every living thing needs a little encouragement to survive. Some plants might like singing. Some will want something else entirely, and you’ll have to start all over from the beginning to figure out what it is. But it can be a rewarding puzzle, if you’re willing to take it on.”

“Yeah, I can see that now,” Teddy enthused. “I can’t believe I used to think –” He broke off, but Neville suspected the intended end of that sentence had been something along the lines of: _I used to think Herbology was boring._

Neville still wasn’t offended. He was well aware that most people thought Herbology was boring. But it was Neville’s private belief that this was very much their loss.

“As for your mum and dad,” Neville began gently. Teddy’s gaze, which had wandered to the puffapod, snapped back to Neville. “You know that no one expects you to be an exact copy of either of them, right?”

Teddy shifted on the bench. “Yeah…I know that. I mean, I think I do. But they were so…they were both so good at everything, you know? Mum was a great Auror, and Dad was this amazing teacher, everybody always says he was their favourite, and they were both really good duellists, and they were in the war and in the Order of the Phoenix, and they – you know –”

Neville mentally supplied the rest: _They gave their lives fighting Voldemort_ , _the greatest sacrifice anyone could make._

Reaching out one finger to test out the smooth underside of one of the puffapod’s new pods, he told Teddy, “Both of my parents were Aurors, too. They were in the Order of the Phoenix and they fought in the First War. They didn’t get killed, but they ended up permanently incapacitated, so I never really knew them. I spent my Hogwarts years thinking I would never live up to their legacy.”

“But – ” Teddy’s eyes had gone round with wonder. “But you’re a _war hero_. You led Dumbledore’s Army. _You killed Nagini._ ”

All of this was true. To his own permanent bafflement, Neville had somehow ended up the stuff of living legend.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I did those things. But before all that, I was an awkward, clumsy boy who was bad at almost everything, and worried all the time that I was letting my brilliant parents down. Those two things can be parts of the same person.”

Teddy’s puffapod was now glowing a soft pink and humming faintly to itself. Teddy leaned in closer to listen, then turned to Neville with a grin when he recognised the tune. Though it was nearly too quiet to hear, the puffapod’s melody seemed to be a faint echo of the hippogriff nursery rhyme.

Neville returned the smile and told Teddy, “Your parents were war heroes. But they were also good people, clever and hard-working, and they were kind to their friends. As far as I can tell, Teddy Lupin is all of those things as well. So I suppose all I’m saying is, give him some time. Teddy Lupin will surprise us yet, whether it’s in Herbology or something we haven’t even thought of yet.”

Teddy blinked, looking pleased and embarrassed. “Thanks, professor,” he mumbled.

“At any rate,” Neville added, “you were here for help with your puffapod, and we’ve certainly helped your puffapod. What do you think?” He slid the plant pot over so it was directly in front of Teddy, for him to observe.

“I think this has been amazing!” Teddy enthused. “I’m going to sing to it again tomorrow. And maybe I’ll read it some comics. Do you think a puffapod would like The Hilarious Adventures of Hilde the Hippogriff?”

“I think it sounds eminently worth a try,” Neville said, with a smile for his now-eager student. “And I think you’re going about this the right way, thinking up many different kinds of attention you could try out for your puffapod.” Neville swept his hand across the table, clearing away a few stray particles of potting soil, then lightly touched the rim of the puffapod’s pot. “But for now, why don’t you go ahead to lunch. Put your puffapod on the shelf with the others, and tomorrow we’ll go on learning about all the things it likes.”

“Okay!” Teddy bounced up from the bench and lifted the puffapod, cradling it carefully in one arm. With the other hand he gave it an affectionate pat, then made his way across the greenhouse to settle the plant carefully on the shelf with those of the other third-years. Neville could see Teddy murmuring to the plant, a grin lighting up his face. When he came back to fetch his school bag from beneath the table, Teddy said, “Thanks, professor. This was really cool.”

“My pleasure,” Neville said, standing up from the bench as well.

Teddy bounded out the door of the greenhouse, evidently restored to his cheerful self. Neville watched him lope across the grounds at nearly a run, heading towards the castle and lunch and his waiting friends, ready to be swept back up into all the perfectly normal, perfectly wonderful little moments that made up a Hogwarts life.

Here was a boy who was the spitting image of both Remus and Tonks, who was in personality a bit like Harry and perhaps even a bit like Neville himself, but above and beyond all those weighty legacies: a boy who was simply himself.

Neville smiled to himself and thought, _Teddy Lupin is going to be just fine._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, so much love I have for Neville! The main other thing I’ve written about Neville is a sketch of his seventh year at Hogwarts, structured around each of the people who matter most to him: [Neville Longbottom and the Year That Was](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985444). He also makes appearances in my Ginny-centric story [Chambers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/632151/chapters/1143552), and has his spot in [Twenty Years On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311407).
> 
> And Teddy, of course… He’s a major player in [Saying Yes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/821297/chapters/1556418), [That Great Unseen Good Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137166), and [Waiting for the Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5860888), and he’s in [Twenty Years On](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11311407), as well as [If You’ve Got a Lantern Hold It High](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11512560/chapters/25835337). And of course mentions of him abound in my Remus/Tonks stories.


End file.
